DC Superheroes Action Figures Series 1: Superman, Supergirl, Bizarro

At the store today with my daughters (7 and 11), we of course ended up in the toy aisle, and hanging on the rack, right next to the Marvel Legends, were several DC Superheroes. And we noticed that they were the same size as the Marvel Legends (around 6 inches, more or less). (The only Justice League figures I'd seen before were the ones from the animated series, and those are only about 4 inches tall, and minimally articulated.) These are decently articulated although certainly not to the degree the Marvel Legends are, and are quite playable. And they come with a comic book.

So of course we got them. Superman, because you've got to have Superman. Supergirl, because the girls want as many female heroes as possible in their games. And Bizarro because...well, I always loved Bizarro. The whole Bizarro concept from the Silver Age. (And didn't he used to live on a whole Bizarro planet? Or did that disappear into the ether along with Kandor? From the comic that came with him it looks like he's somewhere on the regular DC earth.) Bizarro was awesome. I always wanted to be a Bizarro me for some Halloween, but I never got around to it. The seven-year-old looked at the comic--it was a story where Bizarro and Superman wake up in each other's bodies and mayhem ensues--and asked me whether Bizarro was a bad guy. Well, not exactly, I said--where he's from, everything is the opposite of what we're used to here, and when he seems to be doing a bad thing, he thinks he's doing a good thing. She loves the concept. (So did I when I was her age, although it's awfully hard to execute consistently, both for kids playing and for the Silver Age DC writers, as I recall.) So a little lesson in relativism and the power of culture for my daughter. I hope.

The figures are nice, easy to pose and play with (the eleven-year-old would have preferred Supergirl in shorts instead of the miniskirt because with the skirt in the way her range of lower-body motion is limited.). We did have a minor crisis when Supergirl's lower left leg fell off, but the seven-year-old found the pin that had come out, and the eleven-year-old replaced it. (I'm guessing it's a temporary fix, eventually it'll come out again and we'll have to replace it with wire or something.) But nice toys overall. Maybe we can have an Avengers/JLA team-up someday! Mainly, though, the eleven-year-old is now extra-anxious for Warbird to come out so that she and Supergirl can get together and kick some butt. :)